“Downton” technical snafu on RMPBS

Thereâ€™s a war on, Maggie Smith is in high dudgeon, the servants at Downton Abbey are hustling in the kitchen and then â€” TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, apparently beyond our local stationâ€™s control.

Rocky Mountain PBS on Sunday night experienced technical snafus during the most anticipated show on the schedule in years, the season 2 premiere of â€śMasterpieceâ€ť favorite, â€śDownton Abbey.â€ť

RMPBS suffered a server failure at 10:15 p.m. â€śWe deeply regret this happened and for the rest of Downton Abbey will go back to a prior tape based technology as backup,â€ť Doug Price, head of RMPBS, said via email.

He added that he â€ścanâ€™t express our frustration enough with losing 45 minutes of our franchise program for the year. We had a problem about three weeks ago that our technical vendor assured us they had never seen but had none the less resolved. Weâ€™re digging in to that this morning.â€ť

To make amends, RMPBS will repeat the season 2 â€śDownton Abbeyâ€ť premiere on Thursday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 7 p.m.

Joanne Ostrow has been watching TV since before "reality" required quotation marks. "Hill Street Blues" was life-changing. If Dickens, Twain or Agatha Christie were alive today, they'd be writing for television. And proud of it.